Talk:The Golden Shrine
Have you heard something I haven't? I'm eager to see how Hamnet wiggles his way out of the predicament in which he finds himself, with both the Rulers and his own emperor as mortal enemies. My guess is it involves the eponymous shrine, whose mystery I'm also impatient to have solved. Beyond that I'm not enjoying the series so much; BtG was all right, TBoG rather less so. I hope Hamnet doesn't end up with yet another sorceress from a primative culture. Anything can happen once, but the second time was tiresome. Even the formerly-interesting characters are losing their luster, and the plot keeps flirting with creepy, even disturbing, territory. Turtle Fan 20:21, 17 March 2009 (UTC) :Silver updated the main website on Sunday. TR 20:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC) ::It's been a while since last I was there, but I recall it being very,very much in need of updating. Turtle Fan 21:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC) :::Evidentally his career as a publisher and editor keeps him hopping. That is probably why we are bureaucrats to begin with. TR 22:21, 17 March 2009 (UTC) ::::Hopefully he doesn't hop on over in this general direction. Turtle Fan 01:08, 18 March 2009 (UTC) It's out. I read the first chapter. A generic scene that could have come from the slow parts of either of the previous novels. There's a language lesson in there, and as has been true throughout the trilogy HT seems to be paying inordinate attention to describing fictional languages' mechanics. Stalin might be amused. We learn he Rulers build particles into nouns to clarify sentences with ambiguous word order. I smiled at that--reminded me of my Korean days. I flipped ahead through the last couple of chapters. Based on what they say about the encounter they'll have with the mysterious Golden Shrine presumably in the middle of the book, said shrine might be either very cool or very hokey. If it's the latter I'm really going to groan--I don't know why I've invested so much into this series, it's really not that great, but for some reason it's held my attention. Any which way I'm sure I'll continue to make writing articles about the series a low priority to the point of never getting it done in a meaningful way. You know, I wonder if there would be a way to attract fans of HT's fantasy and sci fi novels to come here and expand the categories relating to those books to the point that they match the level of depth and breadth we've given the historical fiction. Our preference for that section of HT's body of work is very heavily felt here. Of course, the fact that that's the area in which HT has met with the greatest commercial success probably makes that rather less inordinate. Turtle Fan 00:25, October 14, 2009 (UTC) :Well, I'm either going to read it one day or I'm not. Never got around to War Between the Provinces. I think The Gap is the same way. ::Likely. If it's going to be one or the other I'd urge you to read WBtP instead. People complain about the unoriginality of it. I happen to think making such clear, direct connections of history to fantasy is a creativity of another sort. Something at which he fell short in Derlavai--There he wanted to tell a WWII story in an exotic setting, but he wanted to play with some variations on WWII at the same time. It was close enough to seem roughly the same as WWII if you squinted--a lot like HW, actually; in the one HT should have changed less, in the other he should have changed more. I sort of enjoyed Derlavai for what it was, but what it was was not what it claimed to be. EIaK also tries and fails to be fantasy-as-history, but it didn't hold itself out as such and it's so much fun I couldn't've cared less. ::In WBtP, however, he pulls off the fantasy-as-history successfully, with only one major exception (Alva) and a fistful of minor ones like racially integrated regiments. Get your head around the sorcerous stand-ins and you're pretty much reading straight ACW historical fiction, with a deliciously rich wordplay puzzle. It felt like Fort Pillow with puns. We could do worse. ::As for The Gap, I'm not sure what he's trying to pull off with it. I do however give him credit for this: As far as I know, it's a completely original story, the first time he's attempted to tell such a story in any format longer than a shortish novella since . . . Hell, since ever, I'm thinking. Turtle Fan 01:50, October 14, 2009 (UTC) :As far as drawing more users--I wish we had prizes to give. That might help a little. But I have linked every where I can on the main wikipedia. If people which to catalog there, then perhaps they'll catalog here. We did get an influx when they clamped down over there. :That's realy the best we can do right now. TR 01:13, October 14, 2009 (UTC) ::We've done what we can. We've got contacts with most of the websites where HT fans go to hang out, and even the ones that don't explicitly push their participants in the AH direction seem to end up being dominated by that segment. I guess that's just the fan base HT attracts. Certainly it's the kind of story he's known for. I can't help thinking he does these non-historical fantasy projects like The Gap simply as a labor of love. Turtle Fan 01:50, October 14, 2009 (UTC) I'd forgotten how slow-paced these Gap books can be. Their covers tend to be rather close together for Turtledove novels, and the story does go in a lot of interesting directions in each one, but somehow it just takes forever to set up each new direction. They travel across plains for dozens of pages. Say what you will about Hitler's War, it was repetitive and unexciting, but at least it would get from one monotonous development to the next, with little time wasted outside the Asian theater and the POVs whose scenes were always meaningless. I was about to say I wish HT could marry the positives of both styles, but then I remembered that he has, many, many times. Turtle Fan 04:17, October 14, 2009 (UTC) Hamnet's brooding over how piss-poor a lover he is to Marcovefa--what else is new, save the object of the preposition?--and now our heroes have captured a female Ruler. I feel like I should lay odds that he trades Marcovefa in for her. He's like that guy who always gives his car back to the dealer at the end of the lease and drives away in a different one. Turtle Fan 17:08, October 14, 2009 (UTC) This book is really starting to piss me off. I'm somewhere around page 250, and not one major character has experienced much in the way of character growth since page 1 of BtG! Mostly they just have the same formulaic conversations and observations about one another, but insofar as they've changed, it's because HT just pulled out-of-character traits out of his ass and slapped them onto the characters. And he's doing it to the characters least in need of changes, too. Suddenly Eyvind Torfinn is a partisan of Sigvat's emperorship and gets all sniffy when Hamnet and Ulric make fun of him. Suddenly Ulric hates Sigvat because he was thrown into the dungeon by him. No, he was thrown into the dungeon by Sigvat's predecessor, according to the relevant references in the previous two books. That's just typical Sam-Carsten-remembered-being-sent-to-Ireland stuff, but it makes you wonder about his motivation for hating Sigvat so much. We know why Hamnet hates him--He'd been a loyal subject when the story began but we watched him develop legitimate grievances. If Ulric had those same grievances, they dated back to before the story began, but he was also a loyal subject at that point. You could say he hates Sigvat out of solidarity with Hamnet (whether they're that close as friends, and whether either is that close with Trasamund, depends on what paragraph you're reading, more on which soon) but he talks about having personal complaints. The only reason we've seen for him to feel personally slighted by Sigvat since the series began also holds true for Eyvind Torfinn, but as I said he's suddenly uncritically backing Sigvat like Hannity backing Bush or Olberman backing Obama. And characters are wildly inconsistent. Sometimes Marcovefa's an atheist, sometimes she's devout. Sometimes Hamnet, Ulric, and Trasamund love each other, sometimes they put up with one another because they each recognize that the others are vitally important to what they're doing but literally want to kill each other. Once in a while they say "Fuck the fact that the others are vitally important to what we're doing" and do try to kill each other. Hamnet suddenly up and decided to kill himself--I mentioned that in another place. Trasamund brawls with Ulric, then tells one of his men he'll kill him if he brawls with Ulric in an identical situation, then brawls with Ulric again. You could chalk that up to him holding himself and others to a double standard, which would be consistent with his character, so of course, since this is TGS, we know it's certainly not that! He gets all horrified at Ulric for blaspheming because he thinks it will displease God and prevent them from finding the Golden Shrine, then blasphemes himself. Someone afraid God will punish him is at least modest enough not to extend the egoism of a double standard that far. Marcovefa gets all fatalistic, saying everyone's where they're supposed to be because the prophecy (apparently a prophecy we've nevar heard of before has been guiding this story all along. For this reason I'm officially subtitling the book The Phantom Menace.) has assured her all will work out as it should in the end, and the temporary setbacks they endure may be the very things that drive them to the final victory. I've often found it comforting to think that way. However, when a battle begins she then says "If we lose this battle then the prophecy will melt away like snow off a south-facing slope"--all of ten sentences after she says all will be well! My favorite part, though, is this: The Rulers ensorcel Marcovefa into a coma. Liv tries a counterspell, but it doesn't work. Audun Gilli tries a counterspell, but it doesn't work either. Eyvind racks his encyclopedic brain for anything he knows about mistletoe (which caused the spell, apparently) and that doesn't work. Marcovefa stays comatose for weeks and weeks. At one point Trasamund tells Hamnet that if he bones her while she's sleeping she might wake up. (Huh?) He says that's disgusting (it is) and that it's a stupid, nonsensical, illogical idea that's got no reason in the world to work (also true, and even more relevant). Trasamund tells him it won't cost anything and they're no worse off for his having tried it. In no time at all, somehow, other characters are taking up the same call by the dozen. Hamnet refuses each of them. In his mind he thinks that this would be rape, which it would, but his resistance is not on moral grounds--which would have very easily made for a powerful scene--but based on the fact that he's stubborn and will resist doing what even his friends (if he has any) tell him to do because he hates being told what to do (another new and anything but improved character trait). But eventually he comes around, and bones Marcovefa while she's sleeping, and lo and behold, she wakes up! You know what, Harry? Fuck you. Turtle Fan 20:00, October 22, 2009 (UTC) Worst Book Ever! I've read some HT novels I hated, but I'd never hated one so much that I felt I'd actually been conned out of the money I spent on it. (I got one that would have made me feel that way for free--I guess Silver's not entirely useless.) I can no longer say that. The first two books in this series just barely managed to hold my interest by the tantalizing promise of the Golden Shrine. The prophecy that apparently has always been there makes it clear that the Golden Shrine will be the key to defeating the Rulers, but it's revealed by the decisive action of the final battle as something of a collateral effect. Then the chief priestess says "Actually, I've been a part of this story all along, you just never saw me till now" as though she were the Borg Queen (re)introducing herself to Picard. The prophecy that drove the novel was supposed to rest on every one of the main characters unwittingly playing a vital role in the discovery of the shrine. The nature of the prophecy changes as the plot requires it to, as though HT had thrown in each prophetic reference before planning the scenes that followed it and then got too lazy to go back and change the prophecy when he saw that what he'd foreshadowed hadn't worked. This could easily be explained as the characters having an incomplete understanding of things prophetic, but instead they don't seem to notice; they're so inconsistent when the plot requires them to be that they probably assume that's true of everybody and everything. Well like I said, they'd all been prophesied to play a vital role in the discovery of the shrine, but everyone was just along for the ride except for Marcovefa and Hamnet. Marcovefa's vital role was casting the spell that revealed the Shrine. Hamnet's was--Yes, boning her in her sleep to wake her up! That's why the Rulers have targeted him for assassination for years. That's his great contribution to world history. That's his reason for existence and what's made his life worth living. You know what, Harry? Fuck you. Turtle Fan 04:35, October 24, 2009 (UTC) :After reading this book, I can't blame you for your views on this series. :A character, who's greatest contribution to his world, is him fucking a comatose woman-:shaman. Really believable plot. Zhukov15 (talk) 22:27, September 8, 2013 (UTC) ::Told ya. And that one plot element is only the most idiotic out of many. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:21, September 9, 2013 (UTC) Recruiting I wrote a review on Amazon last fall warning people away from this excrement of a syphilitic, diarrhetic rhinoceros. It's been voted the most useful review of the book but to my utter shock and dismay most other reviews have been positive. I argued about it with one guy who said he liked it. He pointed out that there's no accounting for taste and then threw out a few references to HT's other fantasy works and asked me if I'd read them. I thought, Ooh, someone who's well versed in HT's fantasy works! stopped arguing and invited him over here. We'll see if he comes. Turtle Fan 02:38, April 23, 2010 (UTC) :John Jorgenson, I presume? 02:58, September 7, 2013 (UTC) ::-sEn, but yes. Turtle Fan (talk) 14:56, September 7, 2013 (UTC) :Arthur Jordin is a frequent reviewer over at amazon. He is probably a little too busy for us. TR 14:29, April 23, 2010 (UTC) ::Now that you mention it, I do feel like I encounter the name with some regularity when I look at sci fi or history books. Turtle Fan 19:05, April 23, 2010 (UTC) Series revisited some years later Most of what Turtle Fan says throughout this page (nearly a decade ago) was pretty much what I was thinking when reading this series this last week. Some parts of the series were really good, and had me enthralled and really caring about the characters. Then a really stupid and/or distasteful scene would follow, and piss away all the built-up credibility and good feelings. Gudrid should have been a great character, and her Bewitched-style ENF catfight scene at the end of book one was delectable, but in this book she became useless along with everybody else. Marcovefa specifically tells Hamnet Thyssen that Gudrid has to come along because she'll have some important part to play, but G doesn't do any such thing. The "Borg Queen" guardians of the Golden Shrine were so obnoxious and useless I wanted to strangle them. A lot of the series was "scenes of people walking" (as a New Jersey comedy troupe once described The Lord of the Rings) and repetitive conversations about Thyssen's Freudian issues. (Maybe HT had a contract for a trilogy, so had to stretch one story out into 3?) :All these years later, thinking about it makes me angry all over again. I can't begin to imagine why HT thought this a story worth telling. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:33, June 30, 2016 (UTC) I'm really pissed that this series is one of the few HT opus to be released fully on audiobook, while The Guns of the South, The Two Georges, and Ruled Britannia aren't. This series seems like a good concept that drowned in a sea of poor execution. The best thing to come out of it, from our perspective, is articles on kickass prehistoric fauna like Short-faced bear, Mastodon, and Teratorn. If only HT could have actually made those critters relevant to the plot, that would really have been something.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:43, June 30, 2016 (UTC) :Yeah, I guess that was something. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:33, June 30, 2016 (UTC) ::Not only did HT think this a story worth telling, but he also thought Supervolcano was worth telling. And Winter of Our Discontent wasn't? What happened to his sense of judgment? Is he senile?JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:53, July 1, 2016 (UTC) :::For most of 2009, I was pretty concerned. THTGB and WHGTY were quite good, but the other shorts were just--weird. HW was such a snoozer (and that series never really got better), GMBML! wasn't on my radar screen (I still haven't read it, come to think of it), R (I'd forgotten about that one) was pretty out of left field, and didn't contain any meaty stories (in fact, the title story is just a set-up for a labored pun), and then came TGS. (And BoG, which missed 2009 by a hair, was pretty blah, too; killed a lot of the suspense I'd felt after BtG.) LA was pretty good, enough to stop the bleeding at the end of the year, though I enjoyed it least of the three full-length installments, and though it turned out to be (this wasn't entirely clear at the time) our last glimpse of a wonderful, charming world. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:41, July 2, 2016 (UTC)